I would call these essays impressionistic. Here is an impressionist painting by Claude Monet:
What kind of connections, if any, can you make between this painting and the essays we read for today?
Other questions I have:
- Both of these essays seem to be about faith. Can you explore how they explore this abstract, personal topic and make it concrete and relatable (or not)?
- How are these essays about place? Have you been to Williamsburg and/or Kentucky? What do these places seem to be like after reading the essays?
- Past classes have found both of these essays troubling for different ways: Dombek's b/c of the explicit sex and Daniels's b/c of the difficult nature of the format. How did you react to these essays on a personal level?
- Any questions you still have?
I find the intro to be quite a pleasant trip to wander about. Reading the first paragraph is like seeing a work of my own. It possesses this aura of asking the readers numerous questions just for the sole sake of connecting numerous spider threads to their brains to the letters of your book. It took almost an instant for me to realize that he was using an technique I'm very familiar with, as I used it in all of my essays before this class. The technique consists of asking a barrage of questions to your readers. The more questions then the more you'll feel connected to your readers. Not just their interest, but as well as for the purpose of making it as vague as possible for them to want to get you on board.
ReplyDeleteFor the conclusion, having to skip the middle section and straight to the ending leaves me a lot of questions, it makes me want to know what happened. You predict a lot of things when you hear sex like it's being given to you as an explanation, but not when she actually describes the whole thing that you can clearly imagine it. I feel like it's because of this that it removed the whole abstract-aura away from me, as it feels more clear to me now, if I'm even using that term correctly.